Testing Configuration and Benchmarks Used
For our testing today, we chose to pit the MSI X79A-GD65 (8D) against Gigabyte’s X79-UD5 to see which $300 motherboard will take our Intel i7-3820 processor to its highest performance levels in a host of benchmarks ranging from PCMark Vantage to SiSandra 2011.
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Test System Setup |
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CPU |
Intel i7-3820 (running at 3.6GHz, 100×36) |
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Motherboards |
MSI X79A-GD65 (8D) |
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Memory |
Corsair 16GB (4x4GB) DDR3-1600 Quad Channel |
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Solid State Drive |
Western Digital Silicon Edge Blue 128GB SATA 3GB/s |
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Sound Card |
Onboard sound |
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Video Card |
XFX Radeon HD 5770 512MB |
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CPU Cooling |
Zalman CNPS12X |
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Video Drivers |
AMD ATI Catalyst 12.1 |
| Power Supply | PC Power and Cooling Silencer 750w |
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DirectX Version |
DX11/ DX10 / DX9c |
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Operating System |
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit |
Our 64-bit test bench for the LGA 2011 Sandy Bridge-E processors includes 16 GBs of quad-channel DDR-1600 memory, an XFX Radeon HD 5770 512MB graphics card, and a Western Digital Silicon Edge Blue 128GB SATA solid state drive for storage. This configuration is based off a mid-range LGA 2011 system and focuses on evaluating the motherboard’s capabilities and less on the rest of the hardware components.
Benchmarks used:
– SiSoft Sandra 2011
– CineBench 11.5 64-bit
– Handbrake DVD compression
– 3DMark Vantage
– 3DMark11 Professional
– Crysis 2
– Dirt 3
– PCMark Vantage
The one thing the X79A-GD65
The one thing the X79A-GD65 (8D) has going for it is the number of DIMM slots you have. Of course 8 DIMMS can give you a huge workable memory footprint of 32GB for not much money now days. The MSI X79A-GD65 (8D) costs $290.00 at Newegg. Other enthusiast set motherboards start around the $250 mark.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0064LW8UY/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=emjay2d-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B0064LW8UY
Nice review, thanks! These
Nice review, thanks! These look to be great boards and MSI continues to pump out quality product. That said a few things really disappoint me on the new Intel IB chipset lineup that are in no way unique to this board. The most disappointing to me is the lack of native SATA3 ports.
: – Supports two SATAIII ports (SATA1~2) by X79
Really Intel? Still only 2 ports? Lacking is too kind a word IMHO. This is supposed to be an enthusiast chipset yet it has no more native SATA3 ports than the “old” P67 based board I’m currently running. So as an enthusiast the only way I get SATA3 speeds with more than 2 SSD’s in a RAID0 is an aftermarket solution taking up an expansion slot.
Aside from that I’m really impressed by the temps you achieved on air with that OC. 4.6Ghz~1.5v and only 50c on air with a 125TDP cpu HT enabled? That’s the best I’ve seen to date. I cant keep my 2500K 4.6Ghz~1.3v that cool using a H70 under load. You guys testing in a walk in freezer? 😉
Anyway thanks for the review. All I have to do now is find a reason to justify an upgrade with the boss. I don’t think upgradeitis is gonna cut it this time around.
I recently bought the MSI
I recently bought the MSI x79A GD45 8D . I installed the components, and switched on. Unfortunately the computer kept on restarting every couple of seconds. I couldn’t even get into the BIOS
You have to reset the cmos at
You have to reset the cmos at the back of the pc 😉
I have recently bought one of
I have recently bought one of these unfortunately when I turn it on I get no display. There is a dubug code FF on the board.